This is very troubling. And an unwelcome precedent...<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Anne-Rachel Inné <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:annerachel@gmail.com">annerachel@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<h2>Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities.</h2>
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<span><a href="http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/" target="_blank">http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/</a><br>
<br>Written by <a href="http://blog2.easydns.org/author/markjr/" title="View all posts by Mark Jeftovic" target="_blank">Mark Jeftovic</a></span>
<span>on <abbr title="February 29, 2012 - 10:47 am">February 29, 2012</abbr></span>
<span>—</span>
<span><a href="http://blog2.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domain-registered-via-foreign-registrar-on-behalf-of-us-authorities/#comments" target="_blank">29 Comments</a></span>
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<p>Yesterday Forbes broke <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/02/28/feds-indict-former-online-gambling-billionaire-calvin-ayre/" target="_blank">the news that Canadian Calvin Ayre and partners who operate the Bodog online gambling empire have been indicted in the U.S.</a>, and in a blog post <a href="http://calvinayre.com/2012/02/28/legal/calvin-ayre-indicted-by-feds-calvin-ayre-releases-statement" target="_blank">Calvin Ayre confirmed that their bodog.com domain had been seized by homeland security</a>. As reported in Forbes (<a href="http://www.thedomains.com/2012/02/28/feds-not-only-seize-the-domain-name-bodog-com-but-indict-the-4-ownersoperators-including-calvin-ayre/" target="_blank">hat tip to The Domains</a> for the cite),</p>
<blockquote><p>According to the six-page indictment filed by Rosenstein,
Ayre worked with Philip, Ferguson and Maloney to supervise an illegal
gambling business from June 2005 to January 2012 in violation of
Maryland law. The indictment focuses on the movement of funds from
accounts outside the U.S., in Switzerland, England, Malta, and Canada,
and the hiring of media resellers and advertisers to promote Internet
gambling.</p>
<p>“Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits
bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located
outside the country,” Rosenstein said in a statement. “Many of the harms
that underlie gambling prohibitions are exacerbated when the
enterprises operate over the Internet without regulation.”</p></blockquote>
<p>That is a truly scary quote but we'll emphasize that: "The indictment focuses on the movement of funds <strong>outside the U.S.</strong>" and that you can't just "flout US law" by <em>not being in the US</em>. What also needs to be understood is that the domain <a href="http://bodog.com" target="_blank">bodog.com</a> was registered to via a non-US Registrar, namely <a href="http://www.domainclip.com/" target="_blank">Vancouver's domainclip</a>.</p>
<h2>So Here's Where It Get's Scary…</h2>
<p><span></span></p>
<p><a href="http://blog.easydns.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen-Shot-2012-02-28-at-11.22.31-PM.png" target="_blank"><img title="No Bodog.com for you!" src="http://blog.easydns.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen-Shot-2012-02-28-at-11.22.31-PM.png" alt="No Bodog.com for you!" height="275" width="370"></a>We
all know that with some US-based Registrars (*cough* Godaddy *cough*),
all it takes is a badge out of a box of crackerjacks and you have the
authority to <a title="The price of freedom and the cost of a domain name" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/17/the-price-of-freedom-and-the-cost-of-a-domain-name/" target="_blank">fax in a takedown request which has a good shot at being honoured</a>. We also know that some non-US registrars, i<a title="The Official easyDNS Domain Takedown Policy" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/21/the-official-easydns-domain-takedown-policy/" target="_blank">t takes a lot more "due process-iness" to get a domain taken down.</a></p>
<p>But now, none of that matters, because in this case the State of Maryland simply issued a <a href="http://cdn3.bit2host.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BodogWebsiteSeizureWarrant.pdf" target="_blank">warrant to .com operator Verisign</a>,
(who is headquartered in California) who then duly updated the rootzone
for .com with two new NS records for <a href="http://bodog.com" target="_blank">bodog.com</a> which now redirect the
domain to the takedown page.</p>
<p>This is exactly the scenario we were worried about <a title="Verisign domain takedown proposal very worrisome." href="http://blog.easydns.org/2011/10/11/verisign-domain-takedown-proposal-very-worrisome/" target="_blank">when Verisign originally tabled their very troubling takedown proposal</a>.
Said proposal was quickly retracted, but here we have the same
situation playing out anyway. Granted, this was an actual court order,
to Verisign – not a "request" from a governmental or
"quasi-governmental" agency as originally proposed.</p>
<p>But at the end of the day what has happened is that US law (in fact,
Maryland state law) as been imposed on a .com domain operating outside
the USA, which is the subtext we were very worried about <a title="How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2011/12/22/how-sopa-will-destroy-the-internet/" target="_blank">when we commented on SOPA</a>.
Even though SOPA is currently in limbo, the reality that US law can now
be asserted over all domains registered under .com, .net, org, .biz and
maybe .info (Afilias is headquartered in Ireland by operates out of the
US).</p>
<p>This is no longer a doom-and-gloom theory by some guy in a tin foil hat. It just happened.</p>
<p>The ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single
organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc needs
to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of US federal
and state lawmakers (not exactly known their cluefulness nor
even-handedness, especially with regard to matters of the internet).</p>
<h2>The larger picture: root monopolies and the need to replace ICANN</h2>
<p>The .com root will never be opened to a truly competitive bidding
process. Verisign has pretty well ensconced themselves into the .com and
.net roots indefinitely with <a title="Verisign raises fees on .COM and .NET, easyDNS…doesn't" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2007/04/16/verisign-raises-fees-on-com-and-net-easydns-doesnt/" target="_blank">built-in price hikes baked into the cake</a>.
I recall a conversation I once had with Tucows CEO Elliot Noss, back
when they still owned Liberty RMS (which ran the .info registry and
later sold to Afilias) – he lamented that if the .com registry bidding
process were <em>truly</em> competitive, you would see a registry
operator in there doing it for about $2 per domain. At the time the
wholesale cost of a .com domain was $6 and is now $7.85 after their
latest <em>annual increase</em> which is hard-coded into their contract.</p>
<p>I mention this because a truly competitive bidding process for the
registry operator job would bring out both cost competition and
stewardship competition: players who would table proposals on just how
they would respect the rights of all their stakeholders, not to mention
operators who may operate outside the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Where the fsck is ICANN in all of this?</strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>They are nowhere. They are collecting their fees,
pushing their agenda of as many possible new-top-level domains and
despite the fact that SOPA, ACTA, PIPA et aim directly at the interests
of their core stakeholders, for whom they are supposed to be advocates
and stewards. ICANN is conspicuous in their absence from the debate,
save for a smug and trite abdication of involvement (i.e. "<a href="http://blog.icann.org/2010/12/icann-doesn%E2%80%99t-take-down-websites/" target="_blank">ICANN Doesn't Take Down Websites</a>") – translation: "This isn't our problem".</p>
<p>And therein lies the issue. <em><strong>ICANN needs to make this their problem, because it very much is.</strong></em> If ICANN isn't going to stand up, and vigorously campaign for <strong>global</strong>
stakeholder representation in these matters, than they are not only
abdicating any responsibility in the ongoing and escalating crackdown on
internet freedom, they are <em>also</em> abdicating their right to govern and oversee it.</p>
<p>They need to be visible, they need to be loud and they need to come
down on the right side of these issues or they need to be replaced.</p>
<p><strong>Of course, the replacement of ICANN will never happen.</strong>
At least not by a non-US entity, which means we are once again headed
to the unthinkable place that only crackpots and conspiracy theorists
think possible: a fractured internet with competing roots. On the bright
side, life will go on, and companies like mine will probably become
exceedingly wealthy charging every internet user in the world fees to
gain and project visibility across all the myriad internet roots that
will someday exist because governments will refuse to approach it
co-operatively. The only thing that will remain to be seen is whether
we'll be deemed "criminals" for doing so.</p>
<h2>Further Reading:</h2>
<ul><li><a title="First they came for the file-sharing domains…" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2010/11/27/first-they-came-for-the-file-sharing-domains/" target="_blank">First They Came For The Filesharing Domains</a></li>
<li><a title="Verisign domain takedown proposal very worrisome." href="http://blog.easydns.org/2011/10/11/verisign-domain-takedown-proposal-very-worrisome/" target="_blank">Verisign Takedown Proposal Very Worrisome</a></li>
<li><a title="How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2011/12/22/how-sopa-will-destroy-the-internet/" target="_blank">How SOPA Will Destroy The Internet</a></li><li><a title="The price of freedom and the cost of a domain name" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/17/the-price-of-freedom-and-the-cost-of-a-domain-name/" target="_blank">The Price of Freedom and The Cost of a Domain Name</a></li>
<li><a title="The Official easyDNS Domain Takedown Policy" href="http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/21/the-official-easydns-domain-takedown-policy/" target="_blank">The Official easyDNS Takedown Policy</a></li></ul>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div>Brian Munyao Longwe</div>e-mail: <a href="mailto:blongwe@gmail.com" target="_blank">blongwe@gmail.com</a><br>cell: +254715964281<br>blog : <a href="http://zinjlog.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://zinjlog.blogspot.com</a><br>
meta-blog: <a href="http://mashilingi.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://mashilingi.blogspot.com</a><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">"Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."</span></div>
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